Monday, December 1, 2008

Eyeliner

Living with 8 girls in college... I had my fair share of doing other people's makeup. Without a doubt, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, one of my friends would ask me to do her eyeliner. For some reason, eyeliner seems to be very tricky to a lot of people. Most can't seem to get it as thin as they want to, or maybe they were just lazy and knew I would do it for them :) Either way, I have gotten more practice at doing eyeliner on myself and on others than most people get in a life time.

Clearly, there are several different types of eyeliner and ways to wear it and I'm sure everyone has their preference... so I'm going to fill you in on my preference... (I have a few)

First of all, (and my cousin Lauren knows this drives me nuts b/c she is terrible about doing it) but in order to make your eyes appear bigger, more alert, etc... your eyeliner should always be thicker on top than it is on bottom. I'm not talking about a drastic difference between the two, but if your eyeliner is significantly thicker or heavier on the bottom, then it makes you look tired, and your eyes appear smaller, and it drags your eyes down. (and who would want that?) You may think that it doesn't make that big of a difference... but I promise you, you will start to notice.

For quick and easy eyeliner, I think MAC makes great eyeliner pencils. For me, having blonde hair and light eyes, I tend to stick to navys, greys, and purples when it comes to eyeliners. Some of my MAC favs are Blooz, Prussian and Navy Stain.

But as most of my friends know, I normally do not use pencils. My all time favorite eyeliner would have to be Bobbi Brown Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner. I honestly could not love this product more, but I will say, it takes some practice and patience getting use to. My favorite colors for this product are Graphite Shimmer Ink, Bronze Shimmer Ink, Violet Ink, and Sapphire Shimmer Ink. One trick that I've discovered is having the right brush. The brush you need is a tiny angle brush like this one from MAC. I know it says it is a brow brush, but you don't always have to use brushes for what they are intended for. Now this type of eyeliner can require some skill, and maybe in the near future I can post pictures of how to do it.. I just need to find a volunteer to let me practice and take pictures of her....